Somehow, in three tense presidential debates, a combined hours-long colloquy that spanned the political landscape from Big Bird to Benghazi, no one bothered to ask the candidates looking to lead the country about the elephant that has been knocking over lamps, smashing furniture and otherwise causing such discord in our national living room.

Any one of the moderators, or perhaps one of the “town hall” citizen questioners, might have addressed the circumstances, and the crisis: “Mr. President, Gov. Romney, what’s wrong with Congress? How would you fix it? Please, take as much time as you need.” The American public could certainly use the insight.

At a time of national challenge — aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-09 and all of the upheaval since — Congress abandoned the time-honored playbook, which is to find common ground and unite to solve problems. Instead, it treated the American people to an unending cycle of dysfunction: public policy hostage-taking; hyper-partisanship on matters large and small; brinkmanship over budget and fiscal issues — to the point of risking still more financial calamity; since 2007, a record number of Republican-led filibusters in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority; and the virtual abandonment of compromise in the House, where Republicans are in control.

This fall, members of Congress went home to campaign for re-election, amid warnings of a “severe recession” and the threat of a “fiscal cliff” — backbreaking tax increases and automatic budget cuts — still hanging over taxpayers and the economy at year’s end.

The abysmal performance has not been lost on the American people. According to an October survey by Gallup, just 21 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing — and that’s up from 13 percent the month before. Other surveys, as recently as May, put Congress’s approval rating in the single digits, near or at record lows, with Republican lawmakers typically garnering worse marks than Democrats. By comparison, Gallup put President Obama’s favorable rating at 53 percent last week. His low was 38 percent, in October 2011.

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So what is wrong with Congress?

In a November 2011 paper, The Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University blamed “the missing middle” — a steady decline in the number of moderates in Congress since 1960. “Related to the lack of the middle in each party, it is the movement of both parties to more extreme partisanship, which has also helped to create congressional dysfunction. … Over 80 percent of the roll call votes have pitted a majority of Democrats against a majority of Republicans, a measure of partisanship.” In the 1960s, the yearly average was less than 50 percent.

In “11 Things Wrong With Congress,” chief business correspondent Rick Newman of U.S. News & World Report lamented Congress’s sorry performance, noting that Capitol Hill was in no “hurry” to enact the president’s $447 billion jobs plan or to provide tax relief. He wrote, in a September 2011 dispatch, that Congress’s ills included “Too many rich people”; “Gold-plated benefits”; “Free parking”; “Lobbyists”; “The media”; and “No penalty for ignorance.”

For commentator Brian Flynn, writing for CNN.com in March, the culprit is what he referred to as the “duopoly” enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans: “No third party, or even a faction within the parties, can disrupt their stranglehold, especially when redistricting and gerrymandering have created solidly Democratic and Republican seats.”

But not everyone has a symmetrical view of what’s wrong with Congress; in other words, not everyone sees both parties as being equally at fault. In their best-selling book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” leading Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein — the former is from the Left and the latter from the Right — call out Republicans for extra scorn — just as they have, in the past, called our Democrats for their “arrogance and condescension” in 1994, and again in 2006, for “their departures from the regular order.”

Mann and Ornstein write of our current predicament: “… however awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social order and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

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They add: “When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.”

Such are the circumstances that confront the White House hopefuls, the voters and the nation on Election Day.

Our recommendations for Congress:

District 18: Elect Maloney

At every turn, Democratic challenger Sean Patrick Maloney casts first-term Rep. Nan Hayworth as a Tea Party Republican. The label may not exactly fit; the Conservative Club for Growth ranked her tied for 172nd as the most conservative Republican member of the House (although that score still ranks her just ahead of Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Leader, the 176th most conservative member). Whatever the ranking or label, Hayworth’s tenure has been disastrous for the Lower Hudson Valley.

In one key vote after another, Hayworth has stood with the cuts-only, extremist elements of her party to oppose, threaten or delay legislation important to voters in the 18th District — the farm bill; the president’s jobs bill; the transportation bill; the health care reform law (Hayworth pledged time and again to de-fund it); consumer protections; and a host of important budget and fiscal measures — raising the debt ceiling included. She also has opposed funding for Planned Parenthood, jeopardizing health care programs that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion. Hayworth supported an NRA-backed reciprocity measure to allow concealed-carry gun permit-holders to carry in every state — a clear detriment to New York, which has one of the nation’s toughest carrying laws.

And while large swaths of New York sustained severe damage from Tropical Storm Irene, Hayworth put budget extremists’ talking points ahead of the needs of New Yorkers, asserting that any extra federal emergency aid had to be offset by corresponding budget cuts. At the time, the nation was drowning under a never-ending string of natural calamities. Hayworth later made an about-face, disavowing that position. Later still, she said she had been misquoted — a charge rejected by Executive Editor Derek Osenenko of the Times Herald-Record, which first reported on Hayworth’s comments. Her views parroted those of Majority Leader Cantor. Maloney had the correct view, in an exchange from our candidates’ interview: “I think that when it’s your district under water, it’s your job to bring help, and somebody else can worry about cutting the budget.”

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Maloney is a former aide to President Bill Clinton and first deputy secretary to former Govs. David Paterson and Eliot Spitzer. He has smart ideas about promoting green energy jobs, expanding opportunities in higher education and investing in infrastructure. Hayworth’s approach to the nation’s fiscal problems has not strayed from the Grover Norquist pledge against tax hikes, and the cuts-only approach to future budgeting. Hayworth has sought to paint her opponent as an out-of-touch carpetbagger; he lives in a carriage house in Cold Spring, has an apartment in New York City and his partner has a business in Sullivan County, where they also own property. Those ties certainly are substantial enough — as is Maloney’s commitment to the broad interests of New York. He clearly is the better choice for residents of the 18th District. (The district includes parts of Dutchess, Orange, Putnam and Westchester counties.)

House District 17: Re-elect Lowey

This is somewhat of an unusual election for Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, who has served 12 terms in Congress. Instead of perennial GOP foe Jim Russell, tripped up in 2010 over revelations about a controversial paper he wrote on race and ethnicity, Lowey faces challenges from Republican Rye Town Supervisor Joe Carvin and independent Frank Morganthaler, running on the We the People Line. In other words, the race is about the issues and not about the challenger, for a change. In any case, once again, Lowey deserves to come out ahead.

Against a sea of opposition and brinkmanship from Tea Party obstructionists and other extremists in the Republican-controlled House, Lowey has stood up for women’s health care; growth-inspired tax and budget proposals; smart investments in education and infrastructure; and backed common-sense entitlement reform and deficit-reduction measures — over GOP-backed designs that would weaken the social safety net in unconscionable ways.

Both Carvin and Morganthaler oppose “Obamacare” health care reforms. All three candidates express the requisite concern about government spending, but only Lowey’s balanced approach — budget cuts and targeted tax increases — would leave room for the added investment in schools and technology the nation so desperately needs to compete in the global economy. Over the long haul, those are where the jobs are; trickle down tax policy just won’t get it done. The district takes in Rockland and central and northwestern Westchester. Return Lowey to Washington.

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House District 16: Re-elect Engel

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, has represented some configuration of his Bronx, Westchester and sometimes Rockland district since 1989. The newly numbered 16th now takes in Rye city, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, southern Greenburgh and parts south. While he has been compelled to play defense since the Republicans took back the House, his seat remains a safe one; the district, in terms of party registration, remains significantly more blue than red. There is hardly any daylight between the platform Engel promotes and the one championed by President Obama. His steady leadership on the broad range of issues important to New York and the nation merits his return to Washington.

Opposing Engel are Republican Joseph McLaughlin and the Green Party’s Joseph Diaferia. McLaughlin opposes Obamacare, which he considers a government takeover of health care, and is against abortion rights. In our endorsement interview, he said no exception was necessary where a women’s life was in danger. “I don’t think there’s ever been a case of that in the last 50 years,” he said. About 600 women die each year from pregnancy and childbirth. Diaferia, who backs green energy jobs, socialized medicine and investment in education, said Congress suffers because it is not “open to new discourse.”

U.S. Senate: Re-elect Gillibrand

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, seeking her first full term in the Senate, has managed to do something rather remarkable during these hyper-partisan times: get a sizable number of Republican voters to look her way. The prohibitive favorite, Gillibrand was polling 35 percent of likely Mitt Romney supporters, according to a recent Marist poll. Her Republican opposition, Manhattan lawyer Wendy Long, polled only 5 percent of likely supporters of President Obama. Long’s cuts-only approach to the nation’s fiscal challenges may have something to do with that. Gillibrand has earned the support — even the admiration — of all New Yorkers on Election Day. Perhaps her chief legislative achievement was winning passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which added protections for those sickened by the toxic pile in lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. Budget-cutting extremists long threatened to derail the measure. Gillibrand also has been a busy and forceful advocate for families and women’s health care — against a steady barrage of attacks from “small government” opponents looking to curtail abortion rights and narrow women’s health care choices. She also helped end the military’s discriminatory “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy against openly gay service members.

Long has said she opposes Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. She said the matter should be left to the states. “I can’t believe we are spending this much time talking about these issues when the people of New York are out of work,” Long said in the candidates’ sole debate. Actually, it really is no small wonder: last year — in a big spike following the 2010 elections — lawmakers across the U.S. introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health- and rights-related measures restricting access and choices for women, according to the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute. New York needs lawmakers who can work for jobs, work for families and fight for women at the same time.